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gnome-software is using up my internet data

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  gnome-software is using up my internet data Anil Duggirala <anilduggirala@fastmail.fm> - 2018-11-15 13:20 +0100
    Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2018-11-15 15:00 +0100
      Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth, autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-11-15 16:20 +0100
        Re: Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth,  autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is  using up my internet data Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2018-11-15 16:30 +0100
          Re: Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth, autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data rhkramer@gmail.com - 2018-11-15 18:00 +0100
    Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2018-11-15 16:20 +0100
      Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2018-11-15 21:50 +0100
    Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2018-11-15 19:30 +0100
      Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2018-11-15 20:40 +0100
        Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2018-11-16 04:30 +0100
          Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2018-11-16 05:30 +0100
            Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2018-11-18 04:30 +0100

#202458 — gnome-software is using up my internet data

Hello,
Ive got 2 questions:
1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet data quota.
Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?

2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data than completely necessary at the time?
Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more data than necessary?

thanks very much,

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#202464

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 06:56:19AM -0500, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> Hello,
> Ive got 2 questions:
> 1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time
> (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet
> data quota.
> Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is
> gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?
> 
I find this sort of thing intensely frustrating.  As a software
engineer, it is unacceptable to me when default settings are chosen
without considering the potential harm to those whose situations don't
satisfy the developer's assumptions.  In this regard, the whole
gnome-software mess is just as bad as the near total inability to
control when and how updates are downloaded/installed in Windows 10.

Now that I got that off my chest, here is the change I had to make in
/etc:

--- a/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop
+++ b/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop
@@ -3,4 +3,5 @@ Type=Application
 Name=GNOME Software
 Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service
 OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
-NoDisplay=true
+NoDisplay=false
+X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

By the way, systemd is also part of the problem in this area too.  For
example, if you check the output of these commands:

systemctl status apt-daily
systemctl status apt-daily-upgrade

I had to mask them on all of my systems because: a) on my servers and
workstations I already have a solution that I like (cron-apt) which
systemd's apt-daily sometimes interfered with; and b) on my laptops I
consider it unacceptable that system boot automatically kicks off an apt
update, especially when I am tethered to my phone or on crappy hotel
wifi.

This is another one of the areas where I feel Debian has fallen short
with regard to the "universal OS" philosophy.  I personally think that
those defaults are wrong and that those services should default to
"off".  But even if the decision is made to default them to "on",
disabling them should be trivially easy.  I've been a Debian developer
for more than a decade and a Debian user longer than that and it took
quite a while for me to figure out that either of the above things was
happening and then to figure out what to do about it.

> 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time
> I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data
> than completely necessary at the time?
> Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more
> data than necessary?
> 
I don't think that this is possible.  I mean, network-manager can't even
manage to connect to a VPN without leaking your DNS queries, so I would
completely shocked to find that it had support like you describe.  Your
best bet is to just disable the offending services.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#202473 — Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth, autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data

I wanted to try piggybacking on this in hopes that Roberto (or someone else 
reading this thread might be familiar with how to solve a somewhat similar 
problem in Firefox.  (And sorry for the top posting, and, if nobody responds, 
I'll (eventually) start a new thread.

I use Firefox 52.n on Wheezy.  I have the autoplay feature turned off, but 
quite often (I'm not sure it is every time) when I go to a youtube page, the 
video starts playing (even with autoplay turned off -- by that I mean the 
little button / slider on the youtube page).

Does someone here know how to prevent this?

Thanks!

On Thursday, November 15, 2018 08:55:16 AM Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> I find this sort of thing intensely frustrating.  As a software
> engineer, it is unacceptable to me when default settings are chosen
> without considering the potential harm to those whose situations don't
> satisfy the developer's assumptions.  In this regard, the whole
> gnome-software mess is just as bad as the near total inability to
> control when and how updates are downloaded/installed in Windows 10.
> 
> Now that I got that off my chest, here is the change I had to make in
> /etc:
> 
> --- a/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop
> +++ b/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop
> @@ -3,4 +3,5 @@ Type=Application
>  Name=GNOME Software
>  Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service
>  OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
> -NoDisplay=true
> +NoDisplay=false
> +X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false
> 
> By the way, systemd is also part of the problem in this area too.  For
> example, if you check the output of these commands:
> 
> systemctl status apt-daily
> systemctl status apt-daily-upgrade
> 
> I had to mask them on all of my systems because: a) on my servers and
> workstations I already have a solution that I like (cron-apt) which
> systemd's apt-daily sometimes interfered with; and b) on my laptops I
> consider it unacceptable that system boot automatically kicks off an apt
> update, especially when I am tethered to my phone or on crappy hotel
> wifi.
> 
> This is another one of the areas where I feel Debian has fallen short
> with regard to the "universal OS" philosophy.  I personally think that
> those defaults are wrong and that those services should default to
> "off".  But even if the decision is made to default them to "on",
> disabling them should be trivially easy.  I've been a Debian developer
> for more than a decade and a Debian user longer than that and it took
> quite a while for me to figure out that either of the above things was
> happening and then to figure out what to do about it.
> 
> > 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time
> > I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data
> > than completely necessary at the time?
> > Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more
> > data than necessary?
> 
> I don't think that this is possible.  I mean, network-manager can't even
> manage to connect to a VPN without leaking your DNS queries, so I would
> completely shocked to find that it had support like you describe.  Your
> best bet is to just disable the offending services.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -Roberto

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#202474 — Re: Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth, autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 10:12:07AM -0500, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> I wanted to try piggybacking on this in hopes that Roberto (or someone else 
> reading this thread might be familiar with how to solve a somewhat similar 
> problem in Firefox.  (And sorry for the top posting, and, if nobody responds, 
> I'll (eventually) start a new thread.
> 
> I use Firefox 52.n on Wheezy.  I have the autoplay feature turned off, but 
> quite often (I'm not sure it is every time) when I go to a youtube page, the 
> video starts playing (even with autoplay turned off -- by that I mean the 
> little button / slider on the youtube page).
> 
> Does someone here know how to prevent this?
> 
Some settings to check (in about:config):

media.autoplay.enabled -> false
media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground -> true (probably not necessary
if you have the above setting)
media.default_volume -> 0.0 (or something suitably low so as to not be
obnoxious when you do start a video playing)

There are probably others, but those seem to do what I need (which
sounds similar to what you describe).

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#202481 — Re: Piggybacking: Firefdox is using up my Internet bandwidth, autostarts videos even though autoplay is off (was:Re: gnome-software is using up my internet data

On Thursday, November 15, 2018 10:21:19 AM Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> Some settings to check (in about:config):
> 
> media.autoplay.enabled -> false
> media.block-autoplay-until-in-foreground -> true (probably not necessary
> if you have the above setting)
> media.default_volume -> 0.0 (or something suitably low so as to not be
> obnoxious when you do start a video playing)

Thanks--I found the first two setting set the other way and toggled them and 
that seemed to do the job.

I left the volume as set (1.0) so that, if a video does start playing I can 
stop it.

> There are probably others, but those seem to do what I need (which
> sounds similar to what you describe).

There are a lot, and someday I should look through them for other possibly 
useful settings.

Thanks again!

Randy

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#202472

On 11/15/2018 05:56 AM, Anil Duggirala wrote:
> Hello,
> Ive got 2 questions:
> 1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet data quota.
> Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?

Are you sure Gnome itself is culprit? [E.G. SeaMonkey has an option for 
routinely checking for updates]

Back in the days of Squeeze, being on dial-up, I had to deal with 
similar issues. I started out installing/updating from purchased DVD 
sets thus sources.list did not know the internet existed.

Later finding Gnome3 functionally unacceptable, I did no upgrades until 
MATE was available. About that time I gained wideband access with a 2GB 
data cap. Due to personal preference and my definition of convenience I 
still tend to do initial installs from DVD. My typical usage is slightly 
more than 1GB/month. When Stretch was initially released I did a 
netinstall "DVD not yet available". That month I went over the data cap. 
But my carrier rolls over unused data so there was no problem. While 
using that install I had no undesired data usage.

I would suggest investigating MATE. Does it meet your functional needs?


> 
> 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data than completely necessary at the time?
> Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more data than necessary?

I have no background on that question.

HTH

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#202511

Richard Owlett wrote:

> I would suggest investigating MATE. Does it meet your functional needs?

or TDE if the gtk stuff is not friendly enough.

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#202491

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 06:56:19 -0500
Anil Duggirala <anilduggirala@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Hello,
> Ive got 2 questions:
> 1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet data quota.
> Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?
> 
> 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data than completely necessary at the time?
> Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more data than necessary?

That would seem to be quite a tall order - network access is requested
by individual applications, so how would a system-wide framework have a
way to tell how important each individual application's network access
request is? There would have to be some framework under which each
network access request would have some sort of priority description
attached to it. I doubt such a thing exists.

An application firewall might be useful here, but I have no experience
with such them.

Celejar

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#202503

	Hi.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 01:27:39PM -0500, Celejar wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 06:56:19 -0500
> Anil Duggirala <anilduggirala@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > Ive got 2 questions:
> > 1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet data quota.
> > Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?
> > 
> > 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data than completely necessary at the time?
> > Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more data than necessary?
> 
> That would seem to be quite a tall order - network access is requested
> by individual applications, so how would a system-wide framework have a
> way to tell how important each individual application's network access
> request is?

net_cls cgroup controller. QoS, traffic accounting, shaping, outbound
connection control - you name it, it can be built on top of it.


> There would have to be some framework under which each
> network access request would have some sort of priority description
> attached to it. I doubt such a thing exists.

It does exist, but it's unused currently (to my best knowledge).

systemd may be controversial, but they got one thing right - per-service
resource control. And that includes so-called 'user services' that GNOME
programs start left and right and all other. 

So the framework is there. The problem is - they left the implementation
of the policy of the user ☺


> An application firewall might be useful here, but I have no experience
> with such them.

You're thinking of user traffic accounting.

Reco

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#202521

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 22:36:14 +0300
Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> wrote:

> 	Hi.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 01:27:39PM -0500, Celejar wrote:
> > On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 06:56:19 -0500
> > Anil Duggirala <anilduggirala@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > > Ive got 2 questions:
> > > 1. The process gnome-software is downloading up of 10 MB every time (or many times) I connect to the internet, this is killing my internet data quota.
> > > Can someone tell me how to disable this, what exactly is gnome-software doing (it does not seem to be searching for updates)?
> > > 
> > > 2. Is there a way to set a metered connection in debian so every time I connect using usb tethering the system knows not to use more data than completely necessary at the time?
> > > Or every time I use a particular connection it know not to use more data than necessary?
> > 
> > That would seem to be quite a tall order - network access is requested
> > by individual applications, so how would a system-wide framework have a
> > way to tell how important each individual application's network access
> > request is?
> 
> net_cls cgroup controller. QoS, traffic accounting, shaping, outbound
> connection control - you name it, it can be built on top of it.
> 
> 
> > There would have to be some framework under which each
> > network access request would have some sort of priority description
> > attached to it. I doubt such a thing exists.
> 
> It does exist, but it's unused currently (to my best knowledge).

Thanks much - live and learn!

> systemd may be controversial, but they got one thing right - per-service
> resource control. And that includes so-called 'user services' that GNOME
> programs start left and right and all other. 
> 
> So the framework is there. The problem is - they left the implementation
> of the policy of the user ☺

Would you mind explaining a bit further, or pointing me to something to
read about this?

> > An application firewall might be useful here, but I have no experience
> > with such them.
> 
> You're thinking of user traffic accounting.

I don't think I follow you here - isn't "user traffic accounting" per
user, not per specific application? And what's wrong with my reference
to application firewalls?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_firewall

> Reco

Celejar

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#202522

	Hi.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 10:26:03PM -0500, Celejar wrote:
> > systemd may be controversial, but they got one thing right - per-service
> > resource control. And that includes so-called 'user services' that GNOME
> > programs start left and right and all other. 
> > 
> > So the framework is there. The problem is - they left the implementation
> > of the policy of the user ☺
> 
> Would you mind explaining a bit further, or pointing me to something to
> read about this?

kernel can mark any outgoing packet.
These 'marks' are not actual modification of packet (hence they are
invisible once packet goes into NIC), but rather a way to apply a
pre-determined set of rules to it.
net_cls controller is a way to apply such mark to any and all outgoing
packet generated by a group of processes.

A canonical example to (ab)use this resides in the kernel documentation
(cgroup-v1/net_cls.txt.gz).
Successful use requires understanding of at least iptables, tc, nfacct
and may be nft as you need to jump via some impressive amount of hoops
to make the thing work on inbound packets too.

> 
> > > An application firewall might be useful here, but I have no experience
> > > with such them.
> > 
> > You're thinking of user traffic accounting.
> 
> I don't think I follow you here - isn't "user traffic accounting" per
> user, not per specific application?

See above. 'User' is an ambiguous term here.


> And what's wrong with my reference
> to application firewalls?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_firewall

You need to block outgoing traffic based on some criteria - that's where
firewall comes into the play, sure.
But in this case the criteria is not only the application name
(executable, or pid, or service or whatever), but also the amount of
traffic that application consumed. Hence the need of traffic accounting.

Reco

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#202576

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 07:27:36 +0300
Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> wrote:

...

> kernel can mark any outgoing packet.
> These 'marks' are not actual modification of packet (hence they are
> invisible once packet goes into NIC), but rather a way to apply a
> pre-determined set of rules to it.
> net_cls controller is a way to apply such mark to any and all outgoing
> packet generated by a group of processes.

...

Thanks for the explanations.

Celejar

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